Janet Davison Rowley

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Janet Davison Rowley, American medical researcher (born April 5, 1925, New York, N.Y.—died Dec. 17, 2013, Chicago, Ill.), established a link between some forms of cancer and specific genetic abnormalities. This discovery revolutionized cancer treatment and research, enabling more-effective drug therapies and reversing the conventional wisdom, which treated chromosomal mutations as the result, and not the cause, of cancer. Rowley earned a bachelor’s degree (1944) from the University of Chicago and was initially accepted into that university’s medical school, but she was denied entry because the quota of women to be admitted to that year’s class—three—had already been met. She ultimately earned a medical degree (1948) from her alma mater, and she spent the next two decades raising a family and working part-time as a researcher. For her many contributions to medical research, Rowley was the recipient of numerous honours, notably a Lasker Award and a National Medal of Science (both in 1998). She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.